


From Ashes

by andavs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Gen, Hale Pack, M/M, McCall Pack, Pack Bonding, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5135762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andavs/pseuds/andavs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles really couldn’t say for sure who was more surprised when the formerly very much deceased Laura Hale suddenly appeared behind Gerard Argent, mid-villain monologue, and ripped his head off.</p>
<p>Or, what might happen if Laura Hale were resurrected instead of Peter at the end of season two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyromaniacqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyromaniacqueen/gifts).



Returning from the dead wasn’t as profound an experience as Laura had always assumed it would be. For one, there were no bright white lights that she could remember, definitely no choirs of singing angels, _or_ ominous drums of hell. Pretty much zero fanfare, to be honest.

First there was pain, then darkness, then the crushing weight of earth pressing down on her that made her dig towards the surface on instinct. That part was all about as one would guess; it was gross, fairly frightening, tiring, and just plain hard, but once she broke the surface and climbed out—it was pretty anticlimactic. 

It was night, it was quiet, and she was _really hungry._

At least until she found her bearings and saw she had been buried just a few feet from her family’s abandoned home in what used to be her father's garden, then her appetite pretty much vanished, because there was only one person alive who would’ve done that for her.

Derek was here.

Derek was in Beacon Hills.

Derek returned to the place he refused to even _speak_ of, and buried his only family yards from where the two of them had scattered the ashes of their parents and siblings. 

Derek was here, in the same city as their uncle, whose claws and fangs Laura distinctly remembered being the last thing she ever saw before her world became pain, and then nothing.

Peter was the alpha now.

She needed to find Derek.

*

Stiles really couldn’t say for sure who was more surprised when the formerly very much deceased Laura Hale suddenly appeared behind Gerard Argent, mid-villain monologue, and ripped his head off.

Gerard looked pretty surprised, for one, eyes wide and mouth gaping in horror—now frozen like that and staring straight at Stiles from the dirty concrete floor where his head had rolled ten feet from his body.

Stiles himself was a good deal _more_ than pretty surprised, that was for sure, because werewolves were one thing but _zombie_ werewolves were a whole new category he hadn’t been anywhere near prepared to face in his lifetime. Seriously, if one more tiny thing—if fucking _Tinkerbell_ so much wandered through town, he was going to fucking lose it. 

Derek looked—actually, Derek was probably the most surprised. 

Yeah. 

He’d buried his sister after all, _twice,_ once the Sheriff’s Department released both halves of her body, and now she was standing above him, splashed with blood, letting the decapitated body of Gerard Argent collapse with a wet thud.

Stiles looked between the blood stains across her chest, to the wide dead eyes of Gerard lying ten feet from his body, still staring directly at him, and vomited all over the concrete.

*

Laura had to admit, once the dust settled, once the honest to God _kanima_ was straightened out, she’d been expecting _at least_ a hug from Derek. She _had_ crawled from her grave and stumbled through town to find him and save his ass at the last second, after all. Tearing off a guy’s head warranted at least that as a reward.

Alright, maybe not a hug, she was still soaked with Argent blood after all, but was a handshake too much to ask? A single tear of relief?

Something more than being herded into her own Camaro and interrogated in an abandoned train depot like a criminal.

(Though there was a tiny, dark, shameful part of her that couldn't help but be glad that Derek was erring on the side of caution after everything they'd been through.)

At least until she noticed mattresses and blankets tucked into the back corner of the train car and her heart sank.

“Tell me you don’t live here.” She almost didn't actually want an answer, even though she looked to him for one, because the thought of her little brother, now an alpha after Peter's death, squatting in a place like this with his young betas was just— 

Isaac walked past them towards the door now that they were done with their questioning, his amusement trailing behind in his scent.

Derek looked down and away quickly, but she still caught the grin forcing its way out.

“I don’t live here.” His voice had a touch of humor at the edges as he glanced back towards the mattresses, looking at the scene with the appropriate amount of judgment. “Isaac and I share an apartment downtown, but no one else knows that.” At Laura’s raised eyebrow he added, “you wouldn’t want half a dozen teenagers all over your place either.”

“Six teenagers,” she repeated flatly. “You bit six _teenagers?”_

“I bit four. The other two are an unfortunate side effect.”

“You still bit four teenagers. You deserve to have your apartment overrun by them.”

“Well, seeing as you’re still legally dead and can’t get your own place, it’ll also be your apartment they’re overrunning.” He brushed against her with a smirk as he followed Isaac back out to the car, leaving Laura to process that tidbit she honestly hadn’t considered yet.

She was going to be living with a moody teenage werewolf.

Again.

Great.

*

The following week wasn’t exactly a testament to Stiles’ character. He was irritable and anxious, he wasn’t sleeping, like, _at all,_ and he just didn’t have the patience for anything. He’d snapped at Danny when he innocently asked how his face was healing. _Danny._

Basically, the last two months had been a whirlwind of terror, anxiety, and open panic, and then it was just—over. No pay off, no resolution, and _no one around to answer any of Stiles’ billion questions._

Because _zombie werewolf._

There was a _literal_ zombie werewolf somewhere in town, but Stiles didn’t even know where or how because for all the times Derek had just melted out of the shadows unsummoned with the T-Birds in tow, now he was just _gone._ Not in his creepy abandoned train depot, not lurking through the ruins of his family home—the little leather-clad bastards hadn’t even had the decency to come back to school where Stiles could properly grill them for answers.

In fact, aside from Stiles, Scott, and Allison (the latter two skirting around each other in the most painfully awkward post-breakup tango _ever)_ , the only person who _had_ returned to school was the one person, for the first time in his life, Stiles _didn’t_ want to see: Lydia.

He got it, he really did. It was _true love_ with Jackson—less of the epic, forbidden and star crossed lovers than Scott and Allison, but some twisted form of love all the same. And yeah, she’d come to Stiles when she needed someone after Jackson's "death", but Stiles would be stupid to keep denying what they had when their deep-rooted and frankly _stupid_ feelings for each other brought Jackson’s slimey, scaley corpse back to life. But accepting it didn’t make rejection hurt any less.

Not even rejection—that implied he had been even close enough to Lydia’s romantic radar to be turned down. He was so far off her radar he wasn’t even in the same airspace. 

It stung a bit.

He wasn’t exactly _proud_ of his reaction to everything, but that didn’t stop him from ducking into empty classrooms when he heard the foreboding click of Lydia’s heels coming down the hall. Or from intentionally coming late to class so he could choose a seat where he couldn’t become the buffer between Scott and Allison’s awkward and stilted interactions. Or from spending most of his time at home in his room, where he couldn’t feel his dad’s concerned looks aimed at the rainbow of bruises and scrapes on his face. Or from taking the long way home from school out past the preserve hoping for a glimpse of that fucking Camaro or glowing red eyes from the trees.

He just needed answers, some kind of resolution. A confirmation that it was actually over, because his life as of recently was one psycho shitshow after another, and there was no way that was just _done_ like everyone around him seemed to think, not with so many loose ends. Laura Hale was walking amongst the living again for seemingly no reason, Jackson hadn’t come back to school and was a zombie were-lizard-wolf of an entirely different category, and Chris Argent had given Stiles a _look_ at the gas station the other day. 

Call him paranoid due to recent basement events, but any kind of _look_ from any kind of Argent was bad news in his book.

So there was definitely something coming, it was really only a matter of when, but he wasn’t going to be caught off guard again. This time he was going to be ready, and informed, and he was going to pry that information out of Derek if he had to, because aside from Deaton (who was next on Stiles’ interrogation list) he was the only damn person in the city who had any idea of what was going on.

If he wanted answers, he needed to find Derek.

*

Laura didn’t recognize the heartbeat coming down the hall outside, but judging by the way Derek huffed in irritation and slapped his book down before stalking to the door and wrenching it open, he certainly did. 

It was the scrawny kid, the one who'd vomited on the floor of the warehouse, looking very surprised with one hand raised to knock.

“Stiles, what are you doing here?” Derek growled.

The kid recovered quickly from his shock. “Is that any way to greet the guy who saved your life?”

“How did you find me?”

Stiles scoffed. “Duh, my dad’s the Sheriff?”

“Not for long if you keep pulling crap like this.”

Laura felt the atmosphere shift as Stiles’ grin took on an edge. “You don’t seem to mind me pulling crap like this if it gets your beta out of a holding cell.”

“Go home, Stiles,” Derek said somewhat softer, almost apologetically. 

“Yeah no, it’s going to take more than that to get rid of me.” He ducked under Derek’s arm into the loft and planted his feet. A wave of anxiety and stress wafted through the room at the movement. “I demand answers.”

“To what?”

Stiles did a weird, full body spasm and then gestured wildly at Laura, who froze with her hand half in her chip bag at the sudden shift in attention.

“She was _dead,_ Derek, cut in half! _In half!”_ He repeated shrilly for emphasis. Derek finally shut the door after a quick glance down the hallway.

“Believe me, I know.”

“Okay? _And?”_ He waved both arms over at Laura again. Derek still didn’t budge. 

“And now she’s not.”

Stiles’ eye twitched. Derek kept staring. It was eerie how much he looked like their mother while she was listening to one of their excuses she wasn’t buying.

“And that doesn’t concern you at all? People rising from the grave? First Laura, then Jackson—who’s next, Peter? Gerard? _Kate?”_

Stiles wasn’t calming down, and his heartrate was starting to speed up, panic and anxiety pulsing from him with each quickening beat of his heart.

Derek's nerves were rising in response, but he said evenly and _almost_ reassuringly, “That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I’m pretty sure I do.” Oh lovely, he had that condescending smile on his face. It’d been a few years since Laura had to see _that._

“Yeah? What are you, a _psychic_ alpha werewolf now?" Stiles apparently didn't appreciate it. "Does clairvoyance come with the glowing red Terminator eyes and you just failed to mention it before?”

“Shut up. It was Lydia, she did something to bring her back." This was news to Laura, who would be having words with Derek about keeping secrets in the very near future. And also about his tendency to talk about her like she wasn't even in the room.

"I really don't think she did," Stiles said in his own very condescending and ugly tone.

"I was there. I think I would know," Derek snapped back.

Stiles squinted at him for a long moment, decided whether or not to believe him. "Okay, say you were there and it _was_ Lydia. Except Lydia can’t raise the dead. _And_ she’s immune, remember? Did you forget the part where your psycho uncle bit her and she _didn’t_ become a werewolf?"

Laura coughed on a chip; this was _also_ new information. She was ignored.

"There is no immunity to this, Stiles,” Derek growled out, “once bitten, you turn or you die. The only exception would be if she were already something other than human.”

There was a long, heavy silence while the kid processed this, even Laura stopped hacking for the duration, then,

"Oh my _god,_ you’ve got to be kidding me!” Stiles was starting to sound a little hysterical. “Is there anyone in this stupid city who’s still human? Am _I_ even still human?”

“Of course you are, now shut up.”

“Are you sure? Because you also thought Lydia was human and now she can apparently _raise the dead,_ who’s to say I’m not actually a vampire. Or a wizard. Or a friggin’ _centaur.”_

Derek looked away from Stiles to meet Laura’s eye—clearly a cry for help which she smiled at and crunched down on an obnoxiously loud and large potato chip. She couldn’t even begin to list how much shit Derek had put her through in the first year after the fire, all the bratty tests to her patience and control, _constantly_ pushing her limits. She didn’t approve of his going off and making a pack of teenagers, but he was getting exactly what he deserved out of all of this. She was allowed to sit back and enjoy it a little bit.

Her brother tried another tactic; earnest and a touch exasperated, like he had a headache coming on. “Stiles, please just go home. Don’t get involved.”

No luck. Stiles just rolled his eyes.

“Um, my best friend is a werewolf and my other best friend is a hunter, I think it’s a little late to not get involved.”

“Raising the dead takes dark magic. Really dark. You don’t want to be involved in this.” A warning. Interesting approach. Laura looked to Stiles to see how he took it.

He was squinting at Derek in disbelief. “So now Lydia, who _I go to school with every day,_ is practicing dark magic, and you didn’t think a heads up was in order?”

“It wouldn't be if you stayed out of it for once.”

“Okay, even if I _tried_ to stay out of it, collateral damage is my middle name.” He gestured to his banged up face; there was a story there. “Keeping me in the dark really isn’t doing me any favors.”

Derek huffed and looked at the ceiling.

“Seriously man, do you have any idea how much of the last month we could’ve avoided if we just shared _any_ information at all?”

Laura gleefully turned back to Derek for his final shut down in this verbal tennis match before giving Stiles the bum rush, but she did a doubletake at his expression when she realized that Derek wasn’t going to tell this idiot kid exactly where the shove his information. He was giving in.

Holy shit, he was actually going to cooperate. With some human who wasn’t in their pack. At least, she didn’t _think_ he was in the pack, Derek probably would’ve mentioned him at some point if he was. 

But if he wasn’t then this just didn’t make sense. Derek wasn’t the cooperative type, he’d never been. He was always a little shit who did exactly what he wanted, and if you tried to tell him no, he just did it even harder. Usually while maintaining eye contact the entire time, if he could. He was hardheaded and spiteful, and the only person on the planet who had ever been able to change his mind was their mother.

And this kid Stiles, apparently.

“It was the last full moon, Lydia came to find me,” Derek started, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Both Laura and Stiles perked up to listen. “I don’t remember everything, she dosed me with wolfsbane, but I do remember her dragging me to where I buried Peter and doing something with the moonlight. It didn’t work though, nothing hap—”

“Wait a minute," Stiles was already interrupting, and Laura had to catch herself to keep from shushing him. So far, Derek had been tight lipped about the night she came back, only giving a very vague explanation that she accepted for the time being. She wanted real answers. "The full moon, that was—that was the night of her party. No seriously," Stiles continued at Derek's impatient glare, "she spiked the punch with _wolfsbane,_ everyone was totally messed up, hallucinating all this weird crap.” His scent mutated, took on the sour note. Laura could see Derek’s nostrils twitch at the change, and he frowned.

“Why would she spike the punch at a party for humans?”

Stiles shrugged. “Beats me. Scott and Jackson were both there, maybe as a distraction so no one would see her leaving? She’s known for being an attentive host, people would probably notice.”

“So she drugged her guests and then tried to use me to resurrect my dead uncle.”

“And resurrected your dead sister instead!” Stiles finished with a grand gesture towards Laura.

“Why?”

“Who knows?" He turned to Laura. "Feel any mind control murder kind of vibes?”

What the fuck was even happening.

“Who _are_ you?” She demanded, finally putting down her bag of chips and standing to walk over. He started to respond, probably to make some stupid joke, but she just wanted a straight answer. No one was giving her any straight answers, and this kid kept derailing every chance she had at them. “No seriously, who are you? Because first you tracked us down, a gross invasion of privacy, and then you burst in here demanding answers that you really don’t have the right to know, and now you’re accusing me of, what, possibly trying to kill my brother?” Stiles blinked in surprise, his heart pattering in his chest. “As far as I know you’re not a Hale, you’re not in the pack, and you’re not even a werewolf—so what exactly are you doing here?”

His heart still hammering, Stiles straightened and jutted his chin out, meeting her head on.

“I’m the one who’s been keeping your brother’s furry little werewolf ass _alive,_ so if anyone should have to justify being here, it’s you. I’m here to keep my friends safe, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re just the latest threat until proven otherwise.”

Laura cocked her head, letting her eyes flash yellow with her flare of anger, and Stiles swallowed. He was scared, she could smell it all over him, but he wasn’t backing down, and it was seriously starting to piss her off. This kid, this _human,_ had the nerve to invade their space, the only home they had, and tell her that she didn’t know how to protect her brother? That she was a threat to her own family?

“You want a threat?” She growled, and bared her teeth into a grin at the stutter in his heartbeat.

That didn’t stop him though; he just leaned in and snarled right back, “Do your worst, Lassie.”

_“Stiles.”_ Derek stepped between them, pushing Stiles back towards the door. “Go home.”

Stiles opened his mouth to protest, visibly offended, but something on Derek’s face Laura couldn’t see from behind stopped him.

“Fine.” He started backing towards the door. “Try not to get killed, Derek, I’ve had enough psycho alphas to last a lifetime.”

Derek didn’t say anything, he just kept holding his place in front of Laura, directly between them, until Stiles was in the elevator.

“What the hell was that?” Laura snarled, then caught herself and reigned her anger back in. Mostly—her eyes were still glowing, but there was only so much she could do against such utter dickishness. 

“That was Stiles,” Derek answered simply, walking back over to the couch like nothing had just happened, but he was tense and on edge.

“Yeah, I gathered, but why the hell did you tell him anything? This is a pack matter, and he’s not pack.”

“I know, it’s—” He huffed in frustration and sat down heavily. “He’s different. We work together.”

Laura stared.

“You work together.” What the hell did that even mean? Since when did some high school nerd rank higher than Laura, and high enough for them to be keeping secrets and having silent conversations? “He’s not in the pack but you _work_ together?”

It clicked just as the elevator doors opened out in the hall and Isaac’s heartbeat wandered into earshot.

Stiles was their emissary; that’s why Derek was being so cagey about admitting it.

“Any idea why Stilinski is being more of a dick than usual?” Isaac greeted as he rolled open the door, then stopped at the tense atmosphere of the room. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“It’s nothing,” Derek said flatly as he stood again and moved towards the kitchen. He started throwing together a few ingredients he’d set out earlier, focused solely on his task rather than Isaac, who looked extremely uncomfortable considering he lived there.

“Right.” He set his backpack down near the door, out of the way of foot traffic, then wandered over to the couch. “I didn’t tell him the address, by the way.”

“I know you didn’t.”

Isaac shrugged, took Laura’s former seat on the couch, and picked up her forgotten bag of chips. She would worry about it later, because at the moment, she was having something of a minor epiphany, and that was just how monumentally fucked up and dysfunctional the Hale pack had become.

“Derek, what the hell,” she exclaimed, stalking over to stare him down over the vegetables he was methodically chopping into obsessively even pieces. He just raised an eyebrow at her. “How do you guys live with this many trust issues and secrets from your own pack? They don’t even know where you really live! Your own emissary had to find out illegally!”

“What?” He stopped chopping and set down the knife a little too hard.

“I get that you wanted to keep it under wraps like mom, but you don’t have the same kind of foundation she had. You can’t compartmentalize your pack when your pack is only _six people!"_

“What are you talking about? What emissary?” Derek looked genuinely confused, not the fake confusion he’d always pulled when he was younger. “I’m not compartmentalizing anything—my pack, as of right now, is you, me, and Isaac.

“What about Erica and Boyd?”

They jumped and turned towards Isaac's voice, who they’d both evidently forgotten was sitting on the couch. He raised his eyebrows and ate another chip.

“Who are Erica and Boyd?” Laura asked, when no one said anything for a long, awkward moment.

“The rest of our pack,” Isaac answered pointedly, eyes on Derek.

“They’re not pack anymore,” Derek growled tightly, “They left.”

“They were scared.”

“That’s no excuse for abandoning your pack,” Derek snapped back, a little too loud and forceful. Isaac jerked back a little.

Laura scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding me, Derek?” He turned his head and gave her a look to shut up immediately, like he had any kind of authority over her. She shot her own look right back, making it loud and clear that she didn’t appreciate any of this bullshit alpha posturing from her baby brother. “You’re seriously going to let two teenagers, who have been werewolves for all of, what, two months? Become omegas because they were scared and ran?”

He looked away and ground out, “You don’t know the whole story—”

“I don’t need to!” Laura interrupted, “Look, I get that it hurts when someone chooses to leave you, _I remember that feeling.”_ He at least had the decency to look ashamed of his eighteen year old self repeatedly taking off when things got hairy between them. “But to be a pack, you have to be understanding and forgiving. You can’t blame sixteen year old kids for being scared.”

“There are _Argents_ living ten minutes away. I need a pack I can trust to have my back when something happens, and who will do everything they can to keep people safe because it’s the right thing to do, not because they think they have to because I’m the alpha. I need—”

“Stiles?” Isaac interrupted quietly, voice hard, “and Scott?” 

Derek didn’t answer. Isaac stood up casually, then straightened to his full height in a very effective silent intimidation. He slouched so much usually that Laura was honestly taken aback by how tall he really was.

“Did you think we didn’t notice you always going for them?” He continued, very subtly challenging Derek, who just clenched his jaw and stared at his neglected vegetables on the counter, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. “Showing us off like your latest puppy trick to impress McCall? We all thought you would get over it once they made it clear they weren’t interested, but you just, _kept pushing._ ” He smiled but there was no humor it in. Just a cruel smirk. 

“Do you have any idea how much it _sucks,_ thinking you were finally picked first for something, after years of being picked last, only to find out that you were the second choice after all? Erica and Boyd had the right idea; it’s better to be on your own than with someone always looking for something better.”

He paused, clearly waiting for Derek to say something to the contrary, but when he only got silence, he just nodded, that painful smile still on his face. 

“See ya, Derek. I hope you get the pack you _actually_ wanted.”

And then he was gone, letting the heavy door roll shut behind him and leaving the loft in an empty silence.

Derek didn’t move an inch.

“You’re really just going to let him leave?” Laura broke the silence.

Derek picked up the knife again and resumed chopping with tight restraint. “He doesn’t want to stay.”

_“Yes he does!”_ Laura shouted directly at him, because how the hell had her brother actually gotten this stupid in the last year? The brother she left in New York was a bit moody, but he was never this much of an asshole. “He said it himself, he was finally chosen to be a part of something that you _clearly_ wanted him for at some point! He _wants_ to be in your pack, but only if you want him.”

The cutting board cracked loudly and they both glanced down at the bits of carrot rolling down into the ravine of split wood.

“I do,” Derek finally answered, staring down at the cutting board.

_“Then act like it.”_ Laura tried to keep from yelling, but she was _this close_ to punching him in the face out of frustration. “Derek, I love you, but you are being such an emotionally distant douchebag right now that I am one more one sentence response away from leaving too.” She took the knife out of his hand and turned him by his shoulder to face her, staring him down until he looked up and met her eye. “Now what the hell is your deal?”

He just looked at her, jaw clenched. 

“Derek, I can’t help if you don’t tell me.” 

His eyes flicked past her and he was quiet for a second, and Laura was just thinking that he wasn’t going to tell her, when, 

“You died.” His voice cracked a little. “You were gone, Kate came back, Peter was—” he frowned, face screwed up with pain, “I was alone. Scott and Stiles weren’t pack, but they were there. They helped me, even when they didn’t want to. They were all I had.”

That was the most Laura had heard him say yet, and if he was going to say anything more, he didn’t get the chance to because she reached out and yanked him into a probably painful hug. The first hug they’d shared since she left New York for Beacon Hills, she realized with a pang in her chest. 

Derek, _this_ Derek, didn’t exactly give off an air of approachability, his hardened attitude didn’t even leave the possibility of a hug open for anyone. And she’d fallen for it without even noticing, not even bothering to remember the sixteen year old kid who made sure to hug her tightly every morning before he left for school.

A lot of his changes in personality were making a lot more sense now; he was grieving, closing himself off like he’d done years ago when they lost their family, looking for any kind of stability while refusing to believe he needed it, or even that he deserved it.

No wonder he kept gravitating towards Scott and Stiles, kept humoring the human’s constant interference and grating personality. They’d become the only constant in his life since Laura died.

But now she was back.

*

If Stiles thought The Break Up was going to free up Scott for Bro Time, he was sadly mistaken, because they’d somehow ended up with Isaac in the divorce, and he wasn’t even their kid to begin with. Something big must’ve gone down over at Fort Asshale to drive Putzie away from his beloved T-Birds, but that still didn’t explain why he was now Stiles’ problem. Well, _Scott’s_ problem, since the little worm had latched onto him like a baby duckling from hell, but Scott’s problems were Stiles’ problems, and Isaac was definitely a problem. And an asshole, now, too.

He was probably always an asshole underneath his quiet and near invisible exterior, but now he had power and he wasn’t above using it to subject everyone around him to his assholeish ways. Or maybe it was just Stiles, because everyone else seemed to love him. 

Even Melissa, who wasn’t anywhere near close to being okay with werewolves, took one look at his big Bambi eyes and pathetically drooping curls, and now he was living at the McCalls. Which,

1\. When the hell had he and Scott even made it to cohabitating terms of friendship? 

And 2. Stiles still wasn’t completely convinced this wasn’t some convoluted plot of Derek’s to win Scott over to his pack.

So now Stiles had yet another potential threat to add to his growing list, right below Lydia, who was pretty much his number one concern because now she was _always looking for him._

Normally the thought of being sought out by Lydia Martin would've made Stiles’ heart and ego soar, but at the moment it only filled him with dread. Lydia was on a warpath for answers, and while Stiles could push back his anxiety and questions with enough distractions, she didn't take _I don't know_ as an acceptable answer from anyone ever. She needed to know what was really going on, and she needed to know _now._

Right now.

Stiles could tell by the feel of her laser gaze aimed directly at the back of his head.

“Incoming,” Scott muttered as he ducked his head and tried to look busy with his review notes for the chemistry midterm. He’d done his best to help Stiles avoid the Red Peril, while also juggling Isaac and Allison and school, but even a werewolf could only do so much against Lydia Martin on a mission.

Stiles braced himself to turn to meet her. “Tell my dad I love him— _hey,_ Lydia.”

She gave him one of her bitchy smiles that she usually reserved for Jackson when he was being a bigger douche than usual. Stiles was in trouble.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she greeted sweetly.

“Y—es.” He didn’t even try to deny it. He hadn’t exactly been subtle when he threw himself into the men’s room like he was under enemy fire.

“Why?” It was more of a demand than a question.

_Because you’re probably not human and necromanced a werewolf from the grave for unknown purposes, you're possibly being controlled, and I’d rather you didn’t know I know that just in case,_ he didn’t say out loud. 

“I’m... _heartbroken_ over you Lydia,” he instead said sincerely as possible, really trying to push into his words what he’d been feeling just two days before, when he didn’t know she’d raised the dead. It was harder than he would've thought considering how many years of pining experience he had. “Do you have any idea what it’s like knowing that your love for Jackson _literally_ saved his life? That I’ll never even have a chance?” _Arms open, pleading eyes, look away in embarrassment, lip wobble_ — _no lip wobble. That’s too far._

She studied his face for a long moment while he tried to look appropriately pathetic and heartbroken, and Scott hunched in behind him for support. Or maybe to hide.

One of Lydia’s perfectly shaped eyebrows arched and a sharp light sparked in her eye.

“You know something.” 

_Shit._

_Fucking shit._

_Think, dumbass, think!_

“Yeah, that his heart is broken.” Scott jumped in from behind him. Always with the last minute rescues. How American. “And you’re really not helping the situation confronting him like this.” Stiles nodded emphatically and tried to make himself look a little sadder. 

“Do you have any idea,” Scott continued, “how long it takes to convince him to enter the building every day? How he has to convince himself to get out of bed some mornings?” Wow, he was really getting into it. “Knowing he’ll see you in almost every class, sit with you at lunch, pretend everything is normal but it’ll never be the same again because your family—”

_“Whoa,_ there, Scotty.” Stiles cut in, patting him on the chest and pushing him back a bit before it got even _more_ personal, “let’s save a few shreds of my dignity for later, alright?”

Scott blinked at him, looked confused for a second, and then his eyes widened.

“For sure,” he agreed quickly, “there needs to be something left for me to crush in Mario Kart tonight.” 

Stiles could literally kiss him. Or buy him two pizzas, which he would probably be needing later now that his heartbreak had caught up with him again. Yeah, his eyebrows were drooping. If he was lucky and played his cards right, Stiles could get him through chemistry without a wolfout. 

Lydia, however, wasn’t buying it. She wasn’t going to push, because she clearly thought they were idiots and intended to work around them, but she wasn’t buying it.

She narrowed her eyes and parted with a quick, “Harris took the group work portion out of the midterm. Adjust accordingly.”

And then she was gone. Stiles didn’t breathe until the click of her heels had faded into the crowd.

*

Laura opened the apartment door to Lydia.

“So when Derek said no one knew where he lived…”

“He was grossly misinformed.”

“How’d _you_ find it? Stiles?”

Lydia’s head ticked to the side and her gaze sharpened. “Stiles was here?” She stepped inside uninvited, yet Laura found that she didn’t really want to stop her. “What did he want?”

“Probably the same thing you do.” She let the door swing shut and followed her surprise guest to the couch. “To know why I’m alive.”

Lydia somehow waved dismissively with just her eyes. “I know why you’re alive.”

“Care to enlighten me then?” Since Derek's minor meltdown Laura had been hesitant to push the issue on him, but she wasn't giving up on it.

Lydia primly arranged her designer handbag next to her on the couch before crossing her legs and stating simply and definitively, “Because I wasn’t about to let Peter win.”

Laura blinked, the mention of her uncle catching her off guard. “What does Peter have to do with this?”

“For the last month," Lydia explained with an annoyed edge to her voice, "while everyone around me—including your brother—was running around trying and failing to keep me in the dark, supposedly for my own safety, your uncle was attempting to manipulate me into bringing _him_ back.”

“While he was dead?” Laura felt the need to clarify.

“I haven’t figured out the how yet, but yes. He did all the setup, I just chose a different target at the last second.” 

“So when you took Derek to the old house, that was Peter almost succeeding.”

For the first time Lydia lost her composure, just for a second, before she took a steadying breath. “Your uncle is quite adept at psychological torture.”

Laura wasn’t sure what to do with that. Lydia didn’t seem like the type to exaggerate something like this, she was clinical and concise, but it was horrifying to think that the uncle Peter Laura and Derek grew up with could possibly do something like that to an innocent person. She needed to know more—needed to know just how far gone the uncle she knew really was at the end, that he had been able to kill his own niece for power—but she wasn’t going to force a young girl to relive that kind of trauma. 

She gave Lydia a second to gather herself, then said with a chuckle, “Derek and Stiles think you’re dabbling in black magic.”

Lydia rolled her eyes, but at least now she was smiling, even if it was flat and a little shaky. “Derek and Stiles are paranoid morons.” Couldn’t argue with that. “If they just stopped being terrified for five minutes and talked to the people around them, they would realize that not everyone is out to get them.”

“I’ve been trying to drill that into Derek’s head for years, be my guest to give it a shot.”

Lydia frowned. “Hm, I suspect it’ll be even harder now that he has Stiles as a paranoia partner. Those two really were made for each other, whether they know it or not.”

That made Laura do a mental doubletake, because _what?_ Derek and _Stiles?_

“Well,” Lydia continued before that thought could solidify into anything, “I wish I could stay and chat, but thanks to your brother, my boyfriend is a brand new werewolf with severe trauma, who is about to be shipped off to London by his parents to avoid a scandal.”

Laura opened her mouth, and then closed it. She didn’t even know where to start with that one.

“We’re working on his control before he leaves next week,” Lydia added with a leering yet charming smile as she stood. Oh _god,_ teenage sex lives. That was a horrifying new reality to this young Hale pack. 

Lydia smoothed down her skirt. “Do you mind passing along the news that I am, in fact, _not_ practicing dark magic? You won’t be seeing much of me until after Jackson has left. Then I'll be back and demanding answers, so warn Derek if you feel it's necessary.”

Laura stood too, that deeply ingrained instinct by her mother to walk people to the door flaring up.

“Wait, why did you come here?” For someone in search of answers, Laura had been the only one actually asking questions.

Adjusting her bag on her shoulder, Lydia explained, “Until I get a foothold in all of this, Stiles is my source of information because I can always tell when he’s lying. I just wanted to know why he was avoiding me.” She shrugged a shoulder coyly and clicked back across the open wood floor, her heels echoing through the loft.

For the first time since meeting him, Laura pitied Stiles a little.

“Lydia,” Laura called after her one more time just before she reached the door. The redhead turned around primly, in that refined and aloof way Laura had never been able to master, eyebrows raised. “Why me?”

“Well, _someone_ had to come back from the dead, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Peter.” 

“But why _me?_ Why not my mom, or my aunt?” Or any other member of their family who had infinite more knowledge of how to bring together a functioning pack.

Lydia paused, giving her an appraising look that went on just a few moments too long to be comfortable, but Laura didn’t let it show as she held her gaze.

“I remember you, from before. I think you’re exactly what these idiots need.”

And with that, she turned and left, without so much as a glance behind her.

*

There was a pile of brooding leather in his desk chair.

Stiles inhaled a yell, choked, and threw his phone at its head. Derek caught it easily without even looking up from the book he was reading, which was a good thing, Stiles decided belatedly, because it was a brand new phone after his last died a watery death in the pool, and he couldn’t afford another new one anytime soon. He had expensive instincts, he was realizing.

“Could you maybe leave some kind of sign if this is going to become a habit? A rubber band on the door? A flag out the window?”

“What’s the point if you’re expecting it?" Derek finally looked up and set the phone on the desk. "I might as well just text.”

“Oh, so you _do_ get some kind of sick satisfaction out of scaring me. Is this a prey thing? Does fear make me smell like food?”

Derek snapped the book he was holding shut and cocked his head. “What exactly do you think I eat?”

“Deer? Small elk? Bears?” Stiles shrugged widely. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never witnessed it. For all I know, alphas have transcended the need for food or sleep and roam the woods all night marking their territory.”

“That only takes two hours, tops.”

He said it with such a straight face that Stiles honestly couldn’t tell if he was kidding, so he just narrowed his eyes at him and moved to toss his backpack onto his bed. He would be asking Scott about that in the future. Scott got to answer all of the embarrassing questions.

“You’ve seen Isaac.” 

_“What!”_ Stiles whirled around and threw an arm out at Derek’s voice right behind him, which was caught easily in an unmoving grip.

“Isaac. When did you see him last?” His voice was hard and insistent, but his hand wasn’t; holding Stiles’ forearm still but not tightly.

“You know, you could at least pretend to ask the question instead of sniffing him out on me,” Stiles bitched weakly, his own voice not anywhere near as steady as he would’ve liked, because Derek was a dick ninety percent of the time, but he was a hot dick, and he was right up in Stiles’ space.

“Stiles,” he growled, which really didn’t help the situation.

But alright, banter time was over. Time to focus.

“Um, last period? He went home with Scott.”

“But he’s safe.”

_“Yeeah,”_ he agreed slowly, lowering his arm and Derek's hand with it, “is there a reason he wouldn’t be?”

Derek blinked and abruptly let go of his arm.

“No. It’s fine.”

You’d think someone who could immediately tell if a person was lying would be better at lying.

This time Stiles grabbed his arm as he turned to leave, and he didn’t let go even when Derek looked down at his hand with intent.

“Hey, remember that conversation we had about sharing information?”

“It doesn’t involve you.” He made a weak-for-a-werewolf attempt to move his arm. Stiles tightened his grip and this time stepped right into _Derek’s_ space.

“Actually no, it does. If Isaac’s in danger, then so are Scott and Melissa because he’s staying at their house. The second your pack’s dysfunction starts endangering _my_ pack, it involves me.”

“Your pack,” Derek repeated quietly, almost with an insulting dark amusement.

“Yeah, my pack,” Stiles shot back forcefully, “so either pony up or go collect your garbage.”

Derek clenched his jaw for an awkwardly long silence, and Stiles was suddenly horribly aware that he was still grabbing an alpha’s bicep. Would it be considered giving in if he let go? Was this a challenge? Did he actually even feel it? 

Almost like he could read his mind, Derek looked pointedly at Stiles’ hand, then announced, “There was a dead deer on the porch of my family's house.”

Stiles blinked, let go, looked around his mind for some kind of connection beyond a possible veiled threat, and gave up.

“And you...think Isaac did it?”

The loathing glare he got in response was entirely unfair given what little information he was working with.

“It was another pack, it was a ransom note. They have Erica and Boyd.”

Stiles was having a number of reactions to that, but first and foremost:

“They carved a ransom note into a deer?”

Again, that loathing glare. “They tied its legs together with strips of their shirts.”

“Effective. Really conveys the threat without all the time spent cutting out letters from magazines.” He clapped and rubbed his hands together. “So what are we going to do about it?”

One eyebrow crept up. “We?”

“Yes, _we._ Because the sooner we get your pack back, the sooner Isaac crawls back to you, and the sooner I don’t have to deal with him anymore. Win-win-win.”

Derek nodded to the side like he was considering. “But I have to deal with you in the meantime.”

“We can’t _all_ win, Derek, someone has to take one for the team.” Derek’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Well not _me,_ obviously, I just did. _And_ I’ve been dealing with Isaac for two days straight, I should get a pass for _at least_ a month.”

“I lived with him, doesn’t that give me a lifetime pass?”

“You bit him, you deserve it. Now get out of here, I’ll go get Scott and Putzie and meet you at your secret loft.”

Derek sighed wearily. “Stiles, we’re not the T-Birds.”

“You are one dance number away from being the T-Birds.”

*

Considering just a week or two before Derek had been insisting no teens would ever know the location of the loft, there were a surprising number of teens in the loft.

Not long after Derek returned looking worried, Stiles, Scott, and Isaac poured in and everything went to hell pretty quickly. It was too loud, full of arguing and bickering and barbed insults, and they weren’t getting anywhere closer to finding the location of the pack who had their betas. 

Derek kept arguing that he should just follow the scent north alone, call them when he found something, but Stiles loudly shut that down as obviously a trap every time, and called Derek an idiot for good measure. 

Isaac and Scott wanted to spread out and search the preserve, come around the mystery pack from behind as a group and catch them off guard. Derek called them both idiots.

Stiles was arguing with everyone, gesturing to a large map of the preserve and marking it up nonsensically with red ink when he wasn’t taking shots at Derek and getting hit right back.

Laura wanted to kill them all and then go back to being dead.

As a compromise, she was just starting to suggest that they all go home and reconvene in the morning, for her own sanity, when Isaac’s hard voice interrupted her.

“What is _she_ doing here?” he asked loudly, enough so everyone turned towards the door, which no one had noticed opening in the ruckus. The shouting and bickering abruptly stopped, leaving the loft in a thick silence.

It was the Argent girl, Allison, who’d been there the night Laura came back. She hesitated with everyone staring, looking a little unsure, but she closed the door behind her all the same and walked forward determinedly.

“I texted her.” Scott practically lept to her side, straightening and daring anyone to argue.

“And why did she come?” Isaac demanded, crossing his arms and moving back, unconsciously, towards Derek. Towards his alpha.

Allison took a deep breath and answered simply, “Scott said you needed help. I’m here to help.”

“I don’t want your help.” Derek informed her calmly from where he and Stiles had been arguing over a corner of the map, but his posture was wound tight and ready for a fight. Stiles also straightened, but rather than defensive, he just looked wary, nervous.

Allison narrowed her eyes, a humorless smile breaking out across her face. “I’m not here for you. I’m here to help Scott save Erica and Boyd.”

“You shot them,” Derek countered immediately.

“I know.”

“You captured and _tortured_ them.” Laura’s head snapped up at that, and so did Scott and Isaac’s. The only person who didn’t look surprised by the news was Stiles, who looked down at the red marker his fingers were fiddling with.

“And now I’d like to help them.” Allison didn’t flinch at his accusing tone. 

“Really?” Isaac asked, his voice hard and arms crossed, “you’re not even going to apologize?”

She kept her eyes locked on Derek’s. “I’ll apologize to Erica and Boyd when we bring them back.”

Derek walked out from around the large table, brushing past Stiles’ back, studying the hunter and moving towards her like a predator. Laura knew he wasn’t going to do anything, but it was a powerful intimidation tactic. 

Allison stood her ground.

“And how exactly are you going to help us do that?”

“You’re looking for werewolves. My family finds werewolves.”

“Your family also kills them in cold blood.” Derek stopped just a couple feet away from her, arms crossed, looking down on her. 

She raised her chin to meet his gaze, even though her heart was pounding. “I’m not my family.”

“You almost were.”

“But I’m not.”

“Are we done here?” Scott interrupted hotly, standing between the two. “I asked her for help because aside from her father, she’s the only person in town who knows how to track down werewolves without using werewolf tricks they’ll see coming a mile away. She’s said she’ll help us, and that’s good enough for me, so _back off."_

Derek looked to Scott for a moment, face blank and unreadable, then back to Allison.

“Alright. Tell us what you know if you think you can help.” He stepped to the side, giving her a clear path to the table.

She nodded, gave Scott a small smile, and moved towards the map. Stiles handed her his pen as Derek reclaimed his spot at his side.

“Gerard’s men have been mapping the preserve since they got here, clearing out anything they don’t want nearby and keeping tabs on anything else,” Allison explained as she uncapped the marker and traced a curved line through the map. “This is as far as they made it before he died, but they were still patrolling until they left two days ago, which doesn’t leave enough time for any substantial packs to move into their perimeter and set up a base, especially with hostages.”

“Okay, but the only part they haven’t covered is totally empty,” Stiles pointed out, gesturing along his side of her line, where the topographical map showed the mountains starting. “There’s nothing out here for a pack to to settle into, they’d be sitting ducks in open forest.”

“On the map, yes. But,” Allison drew an X a little higher up in the mountains, just outside of the hunters’ perimeter. “This is an old mansion that I can’t find record of anywhere online. It’s not on any recent maps, I only know it from mentions in daily reports to Gerard, because his men were seeing activity there lately. They were going to head that way next so they didn’t bother pursuing it immediately, but they kept note of what they saw.”

“Which was?”

“Lights, movement, fresh tire tracks,” those didn’t sound like werewolves to Laura. “Howling, a rise in dead animals, lack of wildlife, and claw marks on trees, higher up than any mountain lion could reach.”

Alright, that sounded a little more like werewolves

“And here, that scent trail to the north you mentioned?” She addressed Scott, dragging her finger along a section where the topographic lines drew together close, “it would’ve led you right into a valley where they could ambush from all sides.”

Stiles folded his arms and smugly turned to Derek. “Told you it was a stupid idea.”

Derek rolled his eyes and sighed a very put upon sigh. “I didn’t say it _wasn’t_ a trap, I said I should be the one to trip it.”

“And then be immediately murdered, I assume so they could steal your territory.” Laura couldn’t believe she’d actually just heard him say that. They weren’t actual _wolves._

“Steal my—what websites do you visit?”

“A _lot,_ because _someone_ likes to be difficult and mysterious instead of giving clear and concise answers.”

“Okay!” Laura interrupted (she was really starting to see what Lydia meant about those two, as much as she hated to admit it), "since we have a probable location, how about we actually go get Erica and Boyd instead of standing around bickering like children?”

Derek quickly shut his mouth and straightened back into a Leader Stance.

“We’ll go tonight once it gets dark,” he announced, “whether this is the right place or not, we’ll proceed as though it is. Take anything you need, but keep it light.”

All that was missing was the whole team shouting _break_ before they scattered around the loft.

“Stiles,” Allison whispered across the table, her quiet voice catching Laura’s attention more than any shout would, “can I talk to you?” She gestured back towards the door to the loft in a way that made Laura nervous, but Stiles just nodded and followed her away. 

Derek watched them carefully the entire time.

“Hey,” Laura nudged his arm; it was rock hard with nerves and tensed muscles. “Calm down, we’ll get them back.”

He took a measured deep breath and let it out slowly before answering. “I hope s—” 

_“Whoa,_ hey, what are you—”

Laura whipped around at Stiles’ surprised tone, more out of habit than actually caring if he was alright, but her heart jumped when she saw both his hands up and Allison holding him at knifepoint, an open trunk of _weapons_ at her feet. She must've left them out in the hall when she first arrived.

Laura shifted forward to intervene, but Derek was already moving towards them when Allison deftly flipped the blade around in her fingers and offered it to Stiles grip-first. His dropped his hands quickly, and Derek stopped, but he stayed close, keeping an eye on the pair. Laura did the same as she went back to memorizing the map, reorienting herself with the preserve after so many years away.

“Stiles, we’re human,” Allison said quietly, looking ashamed of his reaction. “We don’t have claws, we have knives, and I don’t want you getting hurt because you’re caught off guard and defenseless.” She offered it again, and this time he took it.

“A knife?” He weighed it in his hand like he had any idea what he was doing. “Are you sure you don’t have something with a little more firepower I could have for ambushing a werewolf pack hideout?”

Allison raised an eyebrow and looked dubious. “Last time you held a crossbow you almost shot Scott in the face.”

“Well, I won’t aim at Scott this time!”

Laura didn’t buy his wide innocent eyes for a second, but they apparently stirred up something in Allison’s cold Argent heart.

She considered him carefully for a long second, grinned, then turned back to her case of weapons.

“Fine, I think I have something even you can handle.”

Laura didn’t want to know.

*

Stiles didn’t know what he was expecting of an ambush a werewolf pack hideout, but it was probably something a little more impressive than two betas as guards boredly wandering around the overgrown backyard of a massive old house that Scott and Isaac had no trouble taking out on their own.

It was too easy.

Laura glared when Stiles informed everyone of this, like he was somehow cursing them with failure. Joke was on her, she hadn’t been around long enough to know that they were cursed whether anyone pointed it out or not. Everything would always go wrong: Stiles’ life motto.

Also, he _would_ be insulted by her obvious dislike of him, but it was entirely mutual. She could sneer at him as much as she wanted; it still didn’t change the fact that he was three thousand percent right. Even Derek agreed with him. He hadn’t said as much, but Stiles could tell by his intensely worried eyebrows. He knew them all too well at this point.

The house was too dark and silent, as far as Stiles could tell, and pretty much all of him was convinced they’d ended up walking into the trap anyway, despite Allison’s help. Two _beta_ guards for a place this big? Suspect. _Way_ suspect.

But Derek hadn’t shown any signs of hearing anything off or out of the ordinary, and since he’d been doing this a lot longer than Stiles and could hear probably infinitely better as well, he decided to trust him on this. Tentatively. If it all went to hell, he could still say he knew it all along.

“Alright,” Derek whispered so quietly it was like he hadn’t even spoken, “you three stay out here,” he pointed to Scott, Isaac, and Allison, and for once, none of them argued, “make sure no one gets to the house while we’re inside. Laura, we’re going in with Stiles.”

At least that’s what Stiles _thought_ he said; he didn’t have werewolf hearing, it was hard to tell, but the actions of everyone immediately after supported his theory.

Scott and Isaac faded into the darkened trees, Allison heading in her own direction for a vantage point; Stiles darted towards the house, Derek in front and Laura behind him.

Once inside, Laura split off to the back of the house, sweeping through rooms quickly while Derek led Stiles deeper into the house, following some scent or sound that Stiles had no hope of ever picking up. They moved together in total silence until they reached a near-demolished kitchen; there Derek perked up suddenly, looking back behind Stiles.

“Go,” he ordered quietly, grabbing his arm and pushing him forward. “I’ll hold him off, you get them out the front door to the cars.”

And then he was gone with a single, solid thump on Stiles’ shoulder, hard enough to make him stumble forward. Was that supposed to be reassuring? Because it wasn’t. _At all._

This was a trap. It was a motherfucking trap, just like Stiles had predicted, and now everyone was going to die.

“Fuck,” he whispered emphatically to himself, alone in a dark, empty kitchen, where Erica and Boyd were supposedly nearby. Somewhere. 

So much for his super alpha protection detail. He’d downgraded to a knife and the flashbang Allison gave him, and it was the shittiest downgrade ever. Even more so than the initial Allison-for-Isaac swap in their trio (though Stiles was really hoping this whole ambush would solve that problem for him).

Despite the distant sounds of a fight outside, all he could hear was his own heart beating a mile a minute in a dark and empty kitchen. How fast could a human heart beat before it imploded? Surely he was reaching the limit, and there was no way that every werewolf within a mile radius wasn’t hearing this; his heart might as well have been an air raid siren piercing through the night. 

_“Stiles!"_

He jumped a foot in the air and whirled around at his name being called from somewhere in the very dark room. Nothing moved, no other sounds, until he somehow managed to hear over his thundering heart: 

_"We're in here!”_

He followed Erica’s voice to a storage room off the kitchen, behind, of course, a locked door. He pounded against the wood.

“Erica? Boyd! You guys okay in there?”

_“We’re fine,”_ Boyd's voice rumbled through the wood, _“there’s mountain ash lining the room, we can’t get to the door.”_

“Of course not,” Stiles muttered, trying the handle on the door anyway. Yep. Locked. 

Okay, he could do this. His dad explained the whole process once when he caught Stiles throwing himself shoulder-first at a locked closet. He checked the hinges—it opened away from him, excellent—took a step back, braced himself with a deep breath, and landed a solid kick near the door knob.

The shock of it went straight up through his shin, into his knee, and out with a yell.

“Holy _God,_ that hurt!” he gritted out through his teeth, hopping on his good leg for a second and shaking out the other.

He was pretty sure he could hear laughing inside.

“Yeah, laugh it up, fuzzballs,” he muttered, knowing they could hear him perfectly, “I’m the only thing getting you out of there so I would appreciate a _little support!”_

He shook out his entire body this time— _yes,_ that was _definitely_ the problem before, dumbass—pushed out a breath of nerves, and kicked the same place as hard as he could. This time the door banged open into the wall behind it with a satisfying crash. Yeah, everyone definitely heard that, even over the distant snarls and bangs and general destruction of werewolves fighting.

And yet he still took a second to feel a little smug (and insulted?) at the shocked faces of Erica and Boyd staring back at him, but mostly he was still panicked and now his leg hurt.

“I’m never making fun of you again,” Erica breathed, scrambling up from the ground, “break it, hurry!”

Stiles dropped down to break the mountain ash line, but there was only empty floor.

“Under the door jamb,” Boyd answered his unasked question, now right above him. He was practically thrumming with energy, ready to get out. Ready to fight.

Stiles scooted back through the doorframe, running his fingers over the beveled piece of wood spanning the doorway. He could feel the light, pulsing pressure of the ash underneath.

“Oh my god, seriously? Is this really necessary?” He yanked his knife out of his belt and wedged it under the seam, working it up on its small nails. It had to come off easily, there was no way they would’ve been able to get two werewolves in there to hold them if they couldn't break the line.

“Come on, faster!” Erica urged, and Stiles only took the time to give her a brief glare before prising the board up and waving away the grey powder.

There was a rush of changing pressure and then two wolves burst out, one of them hauling Stiles up by his shirt and dragging him until he got his feet under himself. And then he was the one doing the manhandling, pushing them forward towards the front door.

“Okay, go, _move faster,_ Erica, I don’t trust this.” He ushered them along the long hallway in front of him, shoving when they hesitated for whatever they were hearing around them.

And then Boyd just stopped, feet from the front door. Ten feet from freedom.

Erica pressed back against Stiles. “Derek—”

“He’s here,” he interrupted, shoved her again, “and waiting for you outside,” shove, _“move!”_

She didn’t move; he might as well have been pushing against a stone building.

“No, he’s—” She cut herself off with a yell when Derek suddenly crashed _through a wall_ into the hallway in front of them, fully wolfed out and already shouting for them to run.

Boyd recovered from the shock first, turning and now shoving Stiles and Erica ahead of him towards the back of the house, where Laura was shouting for them to hurry. Because they might’ve forgotten without her important reminder, only being able to hear Derek just behind them, and the loud crashing footsteps of something massive just behind him.

They were fucked.

They were so close to the back door he could see movement outside, but they were so fucked.

A bright light flared in the darkness, streaking past the door.

Allison’s arrows.

_Allison’s flashbang._

It was in his pocket, heavy against his thigh.

He skidded to a stop, too sudden for Derek to stop before passing him, and turned around.

“Stiles!” Derek yelled from behind. Stiles ignored him, focusing on the monstrous alpha barreling towards him and fighting the flashbang out of his pocket. He looked down at it, glanced up at the alpha, and pulled the pin.

“Get out and cover your ears!” Stiles yelled over his shoulder as he tossed the canister down the hall. There wasn't enough time for him to get outside, but if he stopped, then he might be able to distract the alpha just long enough for everyone else to get out—maybe even trip the guy. He turned and ducked down, squeezing his eyes closed and slapping his palms against the sides of his head.

He had just enough time to think, _man this is going to hurt,_ before a large shape moved above him, and then his entire world exploded.

*

Even with Erica and Boyd back in "their territory" and home safe, Laura found, much to her disappointment, that the loft fell right back into its usual bland routine; Derek up first with the sun, Laura second, then Isaac stumbled out to the kitchen ten minutes before he had to leave for school to scarf down his breakfast. 

It was a quiet routine, hardly anyone spoke a word, and it was boring. _So_ boring. It was nothing like the hectic pack breakfasts she remembered from her childhood, full of yelling and passing plates and toast, and fighting over who took the last cup of coffee and didn’t refill the machine. Derek had a Keurig now, a seemingly infinite supply of the damn little cups for it on the counter, so there was no fighting. Laura missed those mornings desperately, and she knew Derek did too. The oppressive weight of misery and discomfort was stifling, there was no way he was happy with it.

Laura certainly wasn’t, and if she had to keep living with it, she was going to do something drastic.

Luckily, the Monday after the big rescue, something changed.

_Ding._

She looked up towards Derek, who hadn’t moved a muscle beyond his eyes flicking over to his phone on the table next to his paper. The screen pulsed on with a text notification, then faded back to black when he didn’t open it.

Isaac kept eating, reading the sports section that Derek handed to him every morning.

A few moments later, the phone dinged again, eyes flicked over to see, and then went right back to the paper. Laura narrowed her eyes at her brother, but he didn’t do anything else.

Isaac stood up and put his bowl in the sink before grabbing his backpack. He headed towards the door, but faltered when Derek also stood, falling back on their routine of him driving Isaac to school.

“Oh, Scott said he would drive me today,” Isaac rushed out when he realized Derek was following.

Derek hesitated for a second, and then sat back down. “Alright. Do you have lacrosse practice today?”

“Yeah, um, but I was actually going to go to Scott’s after?” He said it as a question, like he was waiting to be refused permission. Derek just nodded, and then Isaac nodded, and he left in silence.

Laura waited until Isaac was in the elevator a few floors down before she hissed, “What was that?” 

Derek looked up, frowning, and shot back defensively, “What?”

_Ding._

“That incredibly awkward exchange that just happened?”

“It was nothing.” He picked up his newspaper again and squinted at it like an old man who didn’t have beyond perfect vision.

“Do you not want him to be friends with Scott?”

He sighed just loud enough for her to hear, and she ignored it and hit him in the arm for being a dick. 

“I don’t control his life. Isaac can be friends with whoever he wants.”

“Does _he_ know that? Because he looked like he was about to shit bricks.”

_Ding._

"Of course he does." He didn't sound nearly as sure as his words suggested.

"Well you might want to tell him again. Just to be sure." 

(Derek's glare was worth it to witness him stiltedly force out "you can be friends with whoever you want" over breakfast the next morning, without any sort or set up or further explanation. Isaac blinked, spoonful of cereal halfway to his mouth. Derek nodded and left without another word.

Oddly enough, Isaac gave Laura a tentative smile before he continued eating.)

Derek’s phone dinged again. 

“Okay, who the hell is texting you this much? You only know five people!” She reached for the phone but Derek finally put down the paper to grab it before she could.

“It’s no one.” 

“No One has a lot to say at 7:30 in the morning.” The phone dinged and he swiped the notification away before she could lean over to see what it said. “Come on, Derek, I’m bored! I can’t even check out a library book until the paperwork goes through, give your poor, dead sister some entertainment to help her make it through the day!”

_Ding._

Derek glared at the screen, typed out a short reply, then tucked the phone under his thigh to keep it away from Laura—an old technique from when they were teenagers. He picked up the newspaper he’d been reading and answered without looking back up,

“It’s Stiles.”

Laura waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

“Well what does he want, is everything alright?” In her short personal experience with Stiles, if he talked a lot, there was a crisis.

Derek still didn’t look up when he said pointedly: “He’s _bored.”_

“And he’s texting you about it because…”

“Probably for the same reason you keep telling me about it.”

“No, he _likes_ you.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “You have too good a sense of smell to believe that.”

“Stiles is seventeen, that’s pretty much a constant for him.”

“Oh gross, that’s not even what I’m talking about!” _Boys,_ honestly. All of them. “I mean everything else he’s projecting, the fact that his anxiety eases when you’re around, he’s calmer, he doesn’t smell like mild terror all the time.”

“He smells like mild terror whether I’m there or not, it’s Stiles.”

“Fine, it’s significantly _less_ mild terror when you’re around.” _Ding._ “My point still stands. He trusts you.”

Derek turned the page of his newspaper and smoothed it out obnoxiously. “Trusting someone isn’t the same as having a crush.”

“No, that’s the texting.” And the missed glances, and the little touches, and the fact that no matter what was going on, they had time to snipe at each other.

Derek _finally_ looked up from his paper to fix her with his old, teenage, bitchy know-it-all expression. As annoying as it was, she’d missed that look. He was far too stern for being twenty-two.

“No, that’s the perforated eardrums keeping him home from high school today, which brings me back to the fact that he’s seventeen.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to talk yourself out of something.”

The bitchy expression dropped into a flat glare.

“If I give you money, will you leave me alone?”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

_Ding._

*

By the time Laura had finished her few hours of freedom and shopping, she'd come up with a solution to their problem. By now it really was _their_ problem, not just Derek's, because if she had to sit through one more dead silent evening of Derek silently reading while Isaac did his homework, silently, in his room, she was going to lose it. That wasn't how packs were supposed to be. They were supposed to be loud, and chaotic, and get up in each other's space, and annoy and piss off but ultimately love each other.

This all encompassing silence was killing her.

She had to do something.

“You want to have a _movie night?”_

She rolled her eyes at the doubt and distrust in Derek's voice. “Pack bonding, please, let's at least try to make this official.”

“Why?”

God, did she always have to hold his hand through this stuff?

“Because by inviting them into your home, you’re showing them that you trust them like you want them to trust you. You said they left because they didn’t feel safe with you, right? So you need to make sure they feel safe, and make sure they know you can protect them.”

“Obviously I can’t, Erica and Boyd—”

“I’m not talking about that kind of danger, that comes later. If you obsess over hunters, and kanimas, and other packs even when they’re not a threat, everyone will always be on edge like you and Stiles and no one will ever be happy. I’m talking about emotional safety.” She couldn’t stop her grin at the sheer discomfort he exuded at the very thought of emotions. “If they feel safe with you in everyday life, they’ll feel safe even when hunters are threatening.”

“But I don’t know how to give them that kind of safety. I can’t even give myself—”

“Yes you do,” she interrupted before he could spiral back down, “just think about what you enjoyed doing with our pack.”

“Laura—”

“No, I know it hurts. I know I tried to just move on and forget them,” she swallowed, unused to talking about this, “close off that part of our lives and start fresh, because it made _me_ feel safe and far away from what hurt us, but that’s not what you need. You need stability and pack, because they’re what makes _you_ feel safe,” he clenched his jaw and looked down at the floor, “and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s clear that you built a pack of lonely and scared people because you were lonely and scared, and you wanted to share some kind of security with them, so do it. Give them what you loved about our pack.”

“I don’t know how.”

Laura tried not to roll her eyes. She really was going to have to hold his hand through this.

“Well first, you should probably tell them you don’t live in an abandoned train depot by the river.” His lips quirked up in a reluctant smile. “And then, I don’t know, invite them over for dinner? No threats, no training, no planning. Show them that you _want_ them in your life.” She debated briefly before adding, "Also, you should invite Scott and Stiles, Lydia too. Probably Allison since she helped save half our pack, even though it’ll be awkward.”

“Why Scott and Stiles?” He tried to look casual, but Laura could tell he was nervous for very adorable and embarrassing crush-y reasons.

“You need allies, especially the other pack living in your city. We’ve got to be a united front the next time some clowns try and move in.”

“Oh, so you admit they’re a pack now?” Great, now he looked smug. Laura glared.

“I’ll admit they’re _trying,_ even though it’s completely ridiculous in every way.”

*

Erica and Boyd were the first to arrive for movies the next night, entering the loft a little nervously and looking unsure of their welcome, despite Derek’s invitation. He greeted them at the door, introduced them formally to Laura, and then she excused herself to give them privacy. What needed to be said could only come from Derek alone; Laura had no place in that conversation.

When she came back in almost an hour later, once their voices had gotten louder and more boisterous, it was to a completely different atmosphere. Still a little awkward, fragile, but she could feel the pack bond through them knitting itself together.

*

Stiles was pretty sure everyone was talking about him.

It was exactly how he’d felt the one Thanksgiving he’d spent at Scott’s house after his mom died with his dad stuck on shift; the entire Delgado clan had steamrolled into town, and Scott and his mom were the only ones who actually kept their promise to stick to English the entire night. Everything else was a rapidfire flow of Spanish shooting back and forth across the table, joking and laughing and constantly glancing at the one white kid slouched low in his seat and picking at his food.

(Scott later assured him that they’d been talking about his absent uncle’s latest sure-to-fail moneymaking scheme, but Stiles knew the truth.)

Now everyone kept glancing over, away from the television, smiles on their lips as they looked him over, then turning away when they spoke as if he would actually be able to read their lips. Erica was definitely laughing at him, lounging between Isaac and Boyd, and he didn’t like the look of the smirks Lydia and Laura kept shooting at each other.

How those two became friends, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t happy about it.

There was a definite chance this might’ve all just been the paranoia from not being able to hear anything beyond muffled murmurs over the constant ringing in his ears.

Flashbangs were loud and not meant to used in narrow hallways, apparently. 

He'd been told by licensed medical professionals that his hearing should be back to normal in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, he was going to kill someone. If he thought werewolves were annoyingly quiet before, they were silent beings of the shadow realm now, and none of them had the decency to maybe stomp a bit in his presence so he could at least _feel_ their footsteps coming up behind him. Okay, Scott and Derek did, but the rest of them were just assholes.

Especially Isaac.

Fuck Isaac.

Actually, just fuck all of them, because they were _not_ being very accommodating to the hard of hearing. At all. They’d only turned on the movie’s subtitles because Stiles bitched about it loudly. Or, at least he thought it was loudly. It’d certainly _felt_ loud.

So yeah, he was moping a little bit. His ears hurt, the constant ringing was getting _really_ annoying and interfered with his sleep, and the fact that he was projecting misery and self-pity made everyone give him space on his own couch, which was really just feeding right back into the misery and self-pity. Being miserable _and_ alone just sucked.

But just as he was considering pulling the _I’m deaf and sad and in pain, take me home_ card on Scott (his dad refused to let him drive until the ringing stopped), his self-pity-mobile hit a speedbump when someone dropped down in the seat next to him, hard enough for him to tip into their shoulder. He frowned at the shoulder, because that looked like a Derek shoulder, but he couldn’t think of a reason for Derek to be sitting next to him when he’d started out the night next to Laura.

He looked up to Derek’s face, expecting some kind of look or a question, something to explain this, but the guy wasn’t even looking at him or the screen. He was looking at his phone, _texting._

Douche.

Stiles rolled his eyes and turned back to the movie.

Derek nudged his side with his elbow, and nodded for Stiles to look down at the phone he was subtly holding up, the backlight dimmed so it wouldn’t be horribly obvious to everyone else.

_They’re not actually talking about you._

He blinked at the screen.

Derek took it back and typed something more, careful and bordering on slow.

_They’re talking about a chemistry midterm._

Stiles glared across the coffee table at Erica, who was suddenly pretending to be completely engrossed in the movie now that she’d been caught messing with him.

Rather than respond out loud and have everyone overhear (or possibly yell directly into Derek’s ear, volume control was still something of an issue), Stiles took the phone and typed out: _you need to work on their manners._

Derek smiled, a soft curve of his lips that Stiles had never seen before. For some reason, it made his heart beat a little faster and he smirked to cover it up as Derek turned to type at his phone. 

_I’ll add it to the list._

 


End file.
